Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

by Michael Lewis

More than $10 billion that was meant to be custodied by FTX somehow had ended up inside Sam’s private trading fund. The document listed only $3 billion in liquid assets—that is, US dollars or crypto that could be sold immediately for dollars. “I was like, Holy shit,” she said. “The question is: Why?” It was the same question Zane had asked. “We had so profitable a business,” said Constance. “Our profit margin was forty to fifty percent. We made four hundred million dollars last year.”

FTX had lost a lot of money to hackers. To avoid encouraging other hackers, they’d kept their losses quiet. The biggest hacks occurred in March and April 2021. A lone trader had opened an account on FTX and cornered the market in two thinly traded tokens, BitMax and MobileCoin. His purchases drove up the prices of the two tokens wildly: